Southeast student government to take over funding for Safe Ride

Southeast Missouri State University's Student Government Association took over funding of the Safe Ride program during the weekend.

Begun in September, Safe Ride offers Southeast students a sober ride through the Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority back to campus or home if they don't have a designated driver. It's free with student ID, student government president Benny Dorris said. It's available from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It will remain free for the rest of the semester.

Dorris said student government has allocated up to $15,000 for the service. He said he doesn't know if it will cost that much, "but for a second pilot program next semester, we were comfortable with that number."

For next semester, which begins Jan. 21, plans are to charge $3 per student, per ride, "so hopefully we can make it sustainable from semester to semester," Dorris said.

Until Saturday, although students rode free, Dorris said the Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority billed the Dean of Students' Office for the rides.

Tom Mogelnicki, executive director of Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority, said the average cost is probably $7 to $9 per ride.

"We charge them the same as we do the general public," Mogelnicki said. "We have zones in the city of Cape and it's based on where they're going to."

Safe Ride started the first weekend of September, and ridership figures from Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority show use has been steady at about 165 riders per weekend. The peak was the weekend of Sept. 26 when there were 214 riders.

Before that, there were 198 riders the weekend of Sept. 19, and 190 the weekend of Oct. 24. Although school was out for fall break the weekend of Oct. 17, the program still had 100 riders, according to Cape Girardeau County Transit Authority figures.

The safe ride idea originally came out of the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Committee, Dorris said.

"We've seen a lot of students using it. We received a lot of positive feedback and students are thankful we're offering this program," Dorris said. "Before we started making decisions, we did a lot of research. By and large, we heard students thought the program was important and thought it was important that student government fund the program.

"That's a huge thing for us, because sometimes students aren't always as forthcoming on how they want their money spent. Since students said they wanted the money spent on this program, we were happy to do so," Dorris said.

For every credit hour an undergraduate student takes and pays for, a certain percentage goes to student government's operating budget. Dorris said student government has about a $345,000 operating budget.

Cape Girardeau Police Department public information officer Darin Hickey said the police department endorses Safe Ride, because even one driving while intoxicated incident is too many.

"Any encouragement that anybody can give, especially working with SEMO where it encourages people not to drink and drive, and any program that helps students in finding a ride, the police department's in support of it," Hickey said. "That's our whole focus anyway, is to get people where they're going safe. We've seen the benefits of it. Our officers see students utilizing the rides home when officers are patrolling downtown. It eventually falls back on SEMO and whether they financially support that or not. Anything that encourages ... safe travel is a positive for us."

To schedule a ride, call 335-5533.

On separate student government initiatives, the organization is doing the following:

• Undertaking an initiative tentatively called Southeast at a Glance that's still in the early stages of planning. Dorris said this started as a way to enable students without smartphones to track shuttles. "We wanted to have a TV or some type of screen connected to the Internet to show that information," he said.

"Then we challenged ourselves and expand our thinking to what other features we could include in the programming," such as information on campus events, weather and news, Dorris added.

Dorris said the screens also would allow students with smartphones to keep their phones idle. Dorris said there is a similar program at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.

"It will be a long-term project, in our minds," he said.

• Student government also received a request from Southeast president Kenneth Dobbins' office to provide student feedback on the semo.edu website, because the university is hoping to do a site redesign. "So student government's part was to reach out to students to see what they thought" of the site, Dorris said. The University Affairs Committee of student government also conducted research of its own, searching through other websites to see what they liked and didn't like.

That report probably will come to the floor of the Student Senate at its Nov. 11 meeting before being sent to the president's office, Dorris said.

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